Total Guitar, July 2006 interview
It’s interesting when you say drugs and alcohol prevent creativity, yet many musicians throughout history have used drugs to aid creativity.
Oh you can do that. I said excessive drug use. Marijuana, mushrooms or acid have the ability to really open somebody up, but they actually do it from one time of taking the drug. If you have one good experience with those drugs you’ve altered your brain permanently for the better. If you have a bad experience with them you’ve permanently altered your brain in a bad way that might take years to correct. I believe in that very strongly. When it comes to a drug like cocaine , I believe it takes a very special environment during a very special period of time for this to be of any value, and I don’t count the present time as being one of those times.
You're drug free now [John raises his eyebrows]. Well if not drug-free you certainly seem to have your drug use under control…For me that’s the important thing. Since I’ve been meditating I feel very strongly that the highest peaks in a person can reach are from resisting that impulse to just take something all the time. When you take drugs you you’re essentially allowing your brain to do whatever it wants. The most important thing you need is to have some kind of contact with the person you are inside and to be honest with yourself. If you have, you don’t need drugs. I feel strongly that there is no drug or drink that makes anybody better than they really are. Meditation can bring a person around. It’s hard as fuck and I had to go through some terrible shit at first. When I went into the studio to make this album my stomach was very painful and I felt that I hated myself all the time. The part of myself I had been running away from was the Mother’s Milk time because I felt as though I hated that person, hated his approach and hated the way he lived his life. I was looking at myself as a stranger who had invaded my own life. During a meditation about three weeks into the studio time I finally realised that I loved that part of myself and from then on my knotting stomach went away and I kicked ass in the studio! I needed that part of myself to make this album.
It’s a controversial step to release such a large volume of music in one go? Do you have any reservations?
No. To me it’s stupid to that it’s controversial. If a painter decides to paint 40 paintings nobody says, “How can you paint 40 paintings?” When it’s a song all of a sudden everybody says “How did you think you could get away with this?” But it’s what we did. I’ll say the same thing The Clash said with Sandinista, the same thing The Beatles said with The White Album, the same thing Jimi Hendrix said when he wanted to make his fourth album a triple record: its what we recorded: It’s the music that came through us. We don’t just make music just for our own pleasure; we make music for our audience. If we write 28 songs that we think are top notch, that’s what we want to give to the public. That’s for mankind. Making music is my gift to mankind and it’s what I have to offer.
You don’t put out 14 songs because that’s what the critics would accept with a smile. We’re putting out what we believe is worthy. I can’t say that if somebody puts the album down it won’t hurt my feelings, because it will. But I can deal with it. What’s important to me is that some kid somewhere, three years from now, could possibly hear one of these songs and decide not to kill himself. I’ve heard that plenty of times from people. People write to me to telling me they fell in love to my music. How do I know that it’s not going to be the 27th song on the album that’s going to do that? Why, just because we’re in the music business, should I have to shorten things to be like everyone else, Fuck that! Business considerations don’t matter as much to us as it does to have the right artistic reasons for doing something. Luckily our managers supported us. When we said we wanted a double record they said, “You know what, why not?” Fuck statistics, we’ve made a good album so let's put it out.
